OIAs annual Rendezvous Leadership Conference continues to raise the bar year after year. With the 2007 event held in Vancouver, WA this year, attendees were treated to an extremely high caliber of speakers covering topics ranging from Latino marketing strategies to urban parks and recreation to the next generations hydrogen economy and its impact on our businesses. Royce Pollard, the Mayor of Vancouver greeted attendees on the first night with a small history lesson about the origins of his town, located directly across the Columbia River from Portland, OR.
While the first night of the event was dedicated to networking and entertainment, Frank Hugelmeyer, president & CEO of OIA announced that next year the Rendezvous will be heading to Boston. In addition, Mike Wallenfels, the new incoming chairman of OIA, outlined a few of the key issues OIA will be addressing during his tenure. First, the organization will be monitoring global economic trends that could have direct or indirect impacts on the outdoor industry. OIA will also be looking at new and effective ways to communicate the message of sustainability while at the same time trying to reconnect children with nature. Wallenfels said that communicating effectively with emerging markets is also on his list of priorities as is maintaining the health of specialty retailers.
The first full day of the conference opened with Marshall Cohen, who gave his view of the mechanisms behind the shifting sporting goods market. While the views of the overall consumer market were valuable, the broad strokes of the trends he described often glossed over issues crucial to the outdoor industry. Nonetheless, his presentation did offer several valuable nuggets of information. In particular, his portrait of the video game market place gave attendees a solid picture of the industrys largest competitor.
Perhaps the most entertaining speakers at the Rendezvous addressed the issue of talking to the millennial generation (born between 1979 and 1994). Cal McAlister and Brian Mahr founded an advertising and marketing agency called The Wexley School for Girls in 2003 and built their company around their ability to address this young generation.
They realized that consumers are looking for new ways to get their media and found creative solutions to communicate marketing messages through these new outlets. They also own a T-shirt cannon.
The primary take away for the outdoor industry is that this generation consists of “digital natives.” The young adults just now entering the work force were raised form birth with computers and the internet. Their entire adolescence was spent with cell phones. Racial and ethnic boundaries dont exist to them. Most importantly, they dont want to un-plug form their digital lives. Finally, in the 1960s the average person received roughly 50 marketing messages per day through any media outlet. This generation grew up receiving anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 marketing messages per day.
The traditional outdoor messaging, “get away form civilization,” does not appeal to this generation. This does not mean that outdoor recreation does not appeal many millenials are attracted to kayaking, trail running, hiking, biking and camping, but they do not want to leave their cell phones at home. The industrys marketing needs to take this into consideration.
On the sustainability front, this years Rendezvous had some of the highest caliber speakers the industry has ever assembled. Laurie Vogel, the general manager of Nikes Considered think tank addressed the issues of green manufacturing and the strides her team has made within the Nike portfolio. Considered takes three main issues into account with their sustainable manufacturing efforts: waste, chemistry and design. These three factors encompass nearly every factor in producing a more sustainable product.
The two main points Vogel left behind were essentially to remove toxins first and foremost, and always start with the aspect of your manufacturing that causes the biggest impact on the environment. For example, many consumers would assume that organic or recycled fabrics would solve many of the environmental impact issues in apparel. In fact, Nike has found that apparel productions biggest environmental impact is in its water use.
The more sobering speaker on the environment, Jeremy Rifkin, painted a dire picture of the direction the world is heading. He also offered some hope by outlining the factors that will contribute to the worlds third industrial revolution, which he believes is right around the corner. Rifkin founded the Foundation on Economic Trends and acted as the chief advisor on economic trend to the EU. He outlined the three biggest issues that will impact the macro economy in the next decade global climate change, increasing third world debt, and increasing Middle Eastern instability.
He also pointed out that the scientific community has made some mistakes when it comes to their climate change projections they have been too conservative in their estimates about the speed of the change. Many shifts in the climate, like receding glaciers, the opening of the Northwest Passage, and polar ice cap melting, were predicted to begin in 2100 or 2200 and they are already underway.
However, Rifkin also pointed to historic trends that show every major economic or industrial revolution has been accompanied by a similar revolution in communications, whether it is the advent of writing coinciding with the rise of agriculture or the invention of the printing press preceding the first industrial revolution. Rifkin believes that the rise of the information age will lead to the Hydrogen revolution and re-shape our economy. However unlike many industrial revolutions, for the sake of the planet, this one needs to take place over the course of one or two generations, not one or two centuries.
Other speakers addressed issues like marketing to Hispanics, the Go Local movement and U.S. China trade relations. In addition, OIA, Timberland and the Washington Trails Council partnered to do a trail maintenance project on the last day of the event. This years sold-out event met all expectations from every attendee BOSS spoke with and addressed important issues for every member of the outdoor industry.
